Every so often I notice that I have been rude a lot for a period of time. It’s sometimes hard to figure out why I am doing so. I’ve been like that a lot lately. I’ve been rather snotty or nasty to more than one person in the last couple of weeks and I don’t have a good excuse for my behavior.
I’m sorry to everyone I’ve been rude to. Most likely you don’t deserve it. I’m going to think pretty hard on my behavior for a bit and try to figure out how to ditch my bad attitude.
So this year I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner. The main thing that is fussy about it is that I have no idea who will want to come. It could be anywhere from 14 people to 24 people. That’s a big difference. That’s an enormous difference in terms of food prep. And seating arrangements.
I’m looking forward to seeing the mingled shock and horror when they discover no really, I don’t own a tv. I’m going to put out board games and cards. 🙂 It’s kind of fun looking at what I should make to eat. My family hasn’t had any experience with my cooking since I started being involved with Noah and boy howdy have things changed. The man introduced me to “full fat” and it’s improved pretty much everything that I cook. 🙂
This means I have two weeks to get my house really clean. No problem. 🙂
At the very least I have two weeks of freedom. Wow. That’s pretty incredible. I am still in my Spanish classes until May if I wuss out on the translation test, but honestly they take up about 7 hours of week for class time and homework time. That’s just not hitting my radar compared to what I’ve been doing for uhm years. My job is to take care of Shanna and do at least my share of housework. If I do more than my share of housework then Noah has more free time to spend with me and he’s in a generally better mood–which is a pretty damn good trade-off in my book.
I started off this freedom by cleaning up the garage to the point where we can now put our car in it! I’m thrilled because putting Shanna in and out in the rain really blows. I also cleaned the bathtub. Today I will putz through more cleaning and laundry. I also want to do cooking and prep stuff for meals for the week because we eat better when I do that.
My projects for this week include: putting furniture together, more house cleaning [we have a lot of cobwebs, finish dusting, finish cleaning the bathroom, maybe vacuum the living room, do a real scrub down of the kitchen], read more books to Shanna, start sorting Christmas stuff [I’m so excited about Christmas this year it isn’t even funny. I’m not doing the major decorating stuff till after Thanksgiving, but I can get a head start on stuff like Christmas cards so that I don’t feel much pressure in December], and enjoy the fact that I don’t have to read anything I don’t want to read! Do you know how many years it has been since I had no pressure about what to read?! For the past five years I have always had it hanging over my head that I needed to do reading for the exams. I haven’t always done it but the pressure was always present.
That said: what books do you like that I should add to my reading list? I may read a summary online and decide oh hell no but feel free to make suggestions. 🙂 I don’t even know what is out there past the canon…
Oh! and posts I want to write: “Ok snarky bitch, here is why I use cloth diapers despite your snotty article you sent me”, “Why are some books included in the canon while others are excluded”, and “Why I’m feeling some unpleasant feelings about the constant barrage of requests for money.”
Due to dietary restrictions we will be going to The Original Pancake House at 39222 Fremont Blvd
Fremont, CA 94538 tomorrow! I have a final (edited) confirmation list that looks like:
[info]rightkindofme — Yes!
[info]mitrian — Yes!
[info]angelkatharine — Yes!
[info]polkamadness — Yes! (Ok, I’ll officially add you instead of just mentally adding you.)
[info]dangerpudding — Yes!
[info]jkuroda — Yes!
[info]yanijc — Yes!
[info]tshuma — Uhm… er… I’ll get back to you. Yes!
[info]bk2w — Yes!
and a tentative list of:
[info]unseelie23 — Uhm… er… I’ll get back to you.
[info]pyro_pixie_86 — Uhm… er… I’ll get back to you.
[info]noirem — Uhm… er… I’ll get back to you.
[info]ribbin — Uhm… er… I’ll get back to you.
[info]zikzak5 — Yes! (No email, but weather is looking poopy so I guess you can’t make it?)
If I get no response from the tentative people by tomorrow morning I will assume you to be a no. I will be showing up at around 9:50 because a reservation for nine people may take a while. I hope ya’ll show up pretty promptly at 10! 🙂
Friends only because there is the implication that you aren’t supposed to share the test questions cause they might use them again some day. I’m reasonably confident no one on my friends list will ever pursue an MA in English from SJSU so I’m risking it.
In 24 hours I take the comp exam. Then I can stop posting about it. (Well, I’ll tell ya’ll whether I pass or not.)
I would appreciate it if folks sent some good juju my way tomorrow morning. I could use it.
20th century British lit:
Continue reading
Someone I don’t know started following me on Twitter so I browsed through her stuff and she’s got some neat stuff on etsy starting with: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=16854964
Very cool!
Whether I pass or not I will at least be on hiatus from studying for a while and that pleases me. I would like to celebrate.
Last night I had this really hot dream about a guy I’ve been *cough* admiring. Continue reading
This morning we brought apples and grapes and donuts and bagels to our local polling place cause it’s an awesome thing for people to volunteer to do. When we got back from dinner tonight they left us a thank you note. Yay!
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| From Shanna |
and a couple of others: Continue reading
If my big, huge bitch of the day is, “It’s taken me two hours to finish booking our two week trip to New Zealand” I really need to shut the fuck up.
Ok, maybe my life isn’t so bad.
The fact that making a flight reservation has taken me over an hour. I am getting really pissed off. Now I am on hold being shuffled between various Indian customer service reps who cannot understand me reading off my reservation number as I try to add a lap infant. I am really really frustrated. And after 20 minutes Travelocity told me that I have to call Air New Zealand. Now Air New Zealand is telling me they can’t do anything, Travelocity has to do it.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
And Shanna just woke up from her nap and is yelling. This took her whole goddamn nap.
Edited: I am up to 55 minutes of phone time after 40 minutes of fucking with websites. But I’m done
Better?
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I am so bad at taking constructive criticism, but I’m keeping an open mind. Some of the feedback on the letter is very helpful and I thank you all for offering opinions when I ask for one.
One point though for the folks who are telling me not to send such an email unless prompted, you are giving me etiquette feedback, not tactfulness feedback. It’s different. I am aware that according to tradition you should not send things like this unasked for. My family won’t take this amiss though. They are well acquainted with me being extremely forward and blunt and by now they just smile and nod. Noah’s family may think this is too forward but I don’t really care as long as they get the message. I would rather they think I am a bit on the rude side than to continue sending crap I don’t want. His family doesn’t know me and in the main they don’t know him either so they send random shit. Given that I have a problem with being sent tacky shit I will send to Goodwill as soon as I unwrap it I’d rather just say this stuff up front. If it means that a few of them decide I am awful and no longer send presents that would be jim-dandy-fine as well.
But ya’ll did give me some good tips on rewriting it to sound less demanding. I appreciate that. 🙂
19th century British this time. Continue reading
I’m going to send an email to various members of my family and CC Noah’s family. I’m going for tactful. For the record, this is one of those times when I am requesting feedback/advice. (I say that to remind people in general that if I do not specifically do so, I don’t want it.)
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So far I have been trying pretty hard to ensure that the clothing Shanna has is at least mostly gender neutral. Some of it is pink stuff that I will happily put on a boy, so it is at least somewhat gendered by society’s standards. I feel a lot of conflict around buying her thoroughly girly stuff though. I don’t want to imprint on her that as a girl it is her job to be ruffly and fluffy and cutesy anymore than I will put a boy in some of the uberbutch shit that I have seen. I wonder how this will play out in the long run in terms of warping her.
(This comes up because I see very cute girly stuff and I consciously choose to not buy it because I don’t want to “send that message”. It’s weird.)
Yesterday was mostly really great. ribbin and I were not as thoroughly focused on prep for my comp as maybe I should have made us be, but instead we did general lit geeking. That was really awesome so I can’t complain. 🙂 Shanna was thoroughly good for the vast majority of the day until she completely lost it to hysteria an hour and a half before the train. That was… hard. We got through it though. We came home and went to bed a bit late, 8:40ish. She slept straight through till 4 without waking for boobie. w00t! We woke up and ate for half an hour, then pottied and tried to get her back to sleep again. Unfortunately my pesty daughter (Mark, I love that word) refuses to go back to sleep. So now she is being uberexcited to have her toys back. 🙂
7 days till the comp exam.